Sitting on my flight to Vegas, I BEGAN to consider the truth that this may occasionally be my ninth year in a row attending the sector Series of Poker and going to Vegas for the summer. It appears like just yesterday I USED TO BE a 21-year-old kid coming off my first big win at EPT San Remo just 7 weeks before playing my first WSOP. I USED TO BE excited, motivated, and thrilled to be going to Vegas to compete on the WSOP.  

On our solution to Vegas

 

Well, it's now nine years later, and that i still have that very same feeling. I'm excited for a possibility to capture a fourth WSOP bracelet. I even have a few exciting prop bets a good way to give me extra motivation to play as many tournaments as possible this year. For the primary time in my career, I'VE made bets on winning multiple bracelets. Essentially the most exciting bet is against a fellow Team Pro, Vanessa Selbst. She laid me 180 to one (my $10,000 vs. her $1.8 million USD) that I won't win 3 gold bracelets this WSOP (Vegas only). I'm really hoping to present her a sweat in this one.   The schedule this year is identical to last year's, which means that I WILL BE playing an excessively similar schedule to what I did in 2015. I WILL BE specializing in the most important buy-in small field events and playing just about every tourney with a $5,000+ buy-in. These are my best chances to win events, so I WILL BE skipping the various huge-field/small buy-in NLH events.   This summer could also be especially exciting as it kicked off with a $300,000 tournament hosted on the Aria.  This event started on Sunday and i am going into Tuesday in fourth place out of the 16 remaining players! I'm really pleased with the best way I'm playing presently after coming off of an excessively strenuous SCOOP grind. I played between 10-16 hours an afternoon for 16 days straight. If you happen to just checked out my results, chances are you'll think it was an excessively successful SCOOP for me. I ENDED second at the overall leader board, second at the high leader board, made six final tables and captured a win, my fifth SCOOP title thus far. However, in reality that I TRULY lost a small amount of cash (around $10,000) just at the tournaments through the series.   This needed to do with the massive amount of huge buy-in events I played and my biggest cash being around 40k. I left some huge cash at the table on the first five final tables where I ENDED sixth thrice and fifth twice, before finally capturing a title within the medium $215 PLO8 event for around $22,000. I'm still really pleased overall with how I played and the volume of deep runs I USED TO BE making each day.   I think playing SCOOP per annum right before going to Vegas serves is a very nice warmup for enjoying the WSOP. I AM GETTING to practice such a lot of different variants in tournament form and get ready for the long grind of sitting in a chair mentally battling my opponents day in and day trip.    2016 has already been a very exciting year for me, and that i can't wait to look what happens this summer. #CantStopWontStop 

Ready to join PokerStars? Click here to get an account. Jason Mercier is a member of Team PokerStars Pro

Read More... [Source: PokerStarsBlog.com]